Wednesday 7 November 2012

Who are we?

World Record Diving Malta is an organization hosting a series of recreational as well as competition diving events on the Maltese Islands. The main scope behind the organization is to showcase the sport of diving in Malta whilst also promoting the Maltese Islands as an ideal destination for divers. Therefore, we endeavor to organize many innovative events and aim to bring the diving community together as often as possible for pleasure diving as well as team building. 



 World Record Diving Malta, commonly known as WRDMalta, was founded in late 2011.  After attempting a number of record dives both for cold water as well as for warm water, the team involved had evolved into a strong, dedicated team of motivated individuals working hard together towards a shared goal whilst proving excellent communication skills and effort between one another. The team started to become well known for their positive team player attitude and received much recognition for their record diving events. Therefore it was agreed that the team should take the next step forward and that is how World Record Diving Malta was born.
 The foundation of our organization is based on the following five values:
1.      Safety: Role modeling safe diving procedures and striving to set a good example when doing so.
 2.      Teamwork: Encouraging teamwork, communication and collective responsibility towards the organizations’ objectives.
3.       Integrity: Showing constant drive and motivation to improve performance.
4.       Innovation: Striving to develop new activities whilst continuously improving existing procedures.

5.       Excellence: Seeking to achieve the highest level of performance in meeting our goals.
 
These values are based upon our shared belief that “ In living a life that honors your highest values, you can achieve unimagined success- rising to your true potential and experiencing fulfilling at the deepest levels” – Michael Angier.

  The team has worked hard to make World Record Diving Malta what it is today and even though the organization has named a director and assistant director, each individual contributes equally towards our success. Based on the infinite variety of skills and abilities demonstrated by our members, the team has been split into the following sectors: Safety Diver Support, Surface Support, IT Support, HR, Marketing & Media Support- all together known as WRDMalta. 



WRDMalta has organized a series of world record breaking dive events based on saturation and endurance diving and throughout the past couple of years have received record achievements and recognition both by Guinness World Records as well as by the Malta National Records Office. These accomplishments were received for the longest time endured both in cold water as well as in warm water. The team is now however looking at broadening our horizons, and with our heads put together, we have managed to come up with a number of new exciting challenges and records to attempt in the future, which will surely be followed by even more ideas and many more events. Furthermore, in order to encourage the diving community to unite, WRDMalta has also organized other events such as beach clean ups, recreational boat dives as well as a fun and innovative experience formally known as ‘Treasure Island’ – an underwater treasure hunt challenge new to the Maltese diving community. 
 

 
At World Record Diving Malta, however, we do not only base our events on physical challenges but also as charitable goals. For this reason, all of our events have been organized in aid of charity, having promoted, contributed and encouraged donations in past events both to local charities such as Dar tal-Providenza as well as to foreign research campaigns such as The British Psoriasis Foundation and Brain Cancer Research, and plan to carrying on helping those in need as much as we possibly can in the not so distant future.

Friday 2 November 2012

Cold Water Record 2012

My name is Sean McGahern and I am a professional certified scuba diving instructor. I have been involved in a series of World Record attempts involving dives in both warm water and cold water.

The first of these dives took place in 2009 where the World Record Diving Malta team and myself broke the world record for the longest warm water open sea dive of 25 hours and 10 minutes. Subsequently, we also attempted to surpass the cold water sea record of 11 hours 46 minutes but was unlucky due to bad weather conditions that forced the team to abort the attempt 1 hour and 10 minutes short of the record. In another recent attempt to exceed the warm water record time, which had been surpassed and increased to 51 hours in late 2010, the team was faced with a number of technical issues which put the teams’ safety in jeopardy. For this reason, and baring in mind that Safety is our number one core value, the dive was cancelled 36 hours into the dive.

Having learned a lot from our previous attempts, we are now looking to set a new cold water record for open sea dive of much tougher endurance, with the help of Starfish Diving Center in St Georges Bay, Malta. In order for this record attempt to take place, a number of regulations must be taken into consideration. Some of these include; a minimum temperature of below 15°c and a minimum depth of 11 meters for 13 hours in order to beat the current record. However, our goal is not only to beat the 13 hour record but to push the benchmark  further and set a new record of 15 hours. The date for this record event has been set for the 8th of March 2013.
During the past couple of years we have built a strong, dedicated team of motivated individuals working hard together and proving excellent communication skills and team effort between one another. The team has been split into a number of sections such as:

• The IT department who:
- Deal with the continuous updates on our website www.worldrecorddivingmalta.com where one may find articles of previous records, plans for future records, blogs, photos and where you may also meet the team.
- Are responsible for dealing with e-mails, contacting sponsors & media contacts during the organization of the dive as well as throughout the entire year
- Update the blogs during the entire event informing the public of everything that is going on during the dive
• The Surface Support Team who are responsible for:
- Ensuring everything is under control during the event
- Tracking all records such as diver logs
- Making sure all divers do not exceed their dive times
- Checking all documents and forms are up to date
- Ensuring that the correct drinks & medications are brought down to Sean on time
- Collecting copies of photos/videos from all participants
• The Safety Diver Team who will be responsible for:
- Ensuring that Sean’s safety as well as their own safety is not in jeopardy, mainly by not exceeding dive times for any reason
- Supplying Sean with cylinders and retrieving expelled cylinders
- Delivering drinks, vitamins and food to Sean during the course of the dive
- Keeping an eye on temperature, heart rate and CNS levels.
- Relaying information from base camp back to land which will be recorded by the Surface Support team.
- Dry divers will only get in the water in the event of emergency.
- Divers will NOT be responsible for refilling cylinders but must return cylinders to filling station after diving. 

All of these members now make up World Record Diving Malta -a recently launched non-profit organization- bringing recreational diving and competition diving to the next level whilst promoting the sport of diving in Malta- a paradise for scuba divers.